5.2 Data Collection
5.2.3 Manufacturing process
In the case company the manufacturing process is mainly the engine to order (ETO) process. It means that lot of customization is done through the process, and process needs to have agile way to handle the changes. Focus is nowadays to develop manufacturing process from R&D to manufacturing and then to services, to have an understanding how the product/service is built through the lifecycle.
Nowadays the challenges in case company are mainly in the change management process.
There is several system operating to handle the change from source to end system and it is not seamless. Product lifecycle management and product data management (PLM/PDM) is level where the product related data is maintained and where the product lifecycle is managed. Target for the product data management is to ensure that all stakeholders share the common understanding and data, to minimize the confusion during the execution of the processes. In the case company the PLM/PDM data is structured from E-BOM to M-BOM before bringing the data to ERP system. Building and maintaining the M-BOM data is nowadays done partly in PLM/PDM side but also in Microsoft excel.
Operating in manufacturing level is important to understand the levels and responsibilities of different core solutions and system. The ISA-95 standard has been developed to understand the cost, risk and errors when implementing interfaces between enterprise and production control system (Figure 28). (Nearsoft, 2013)
Figure 28. The ISA-95 standards of different operating levels. (Nearsoft, 2013)
The correct systems need to be operating and orchestrating in correct operating levels, and the responsibilities needs to be clear. There are nowadays needs as an example to have visualized the production progress and have all necessary correct data available, but what is the source system to use the data. When there is coming a change, how to have an impact from beginning of the process to whole supply chain and finally seen the change in production. The engineering change management is the topic is one big concern in the case company. How to handle the engineering change notice when there is a safety issue, customer change request, or example quality related issue. When the production is already ongoing and then comes a need for change, handling the changes in system requires lot of manual work and the risk is that the data is not correct. Compared to nowadays way working and the need is that related bill of material: drawing, 3D models, material list, documents, quality plan needs to be updated even the production is already ongoing. The system and process need to be supporting rework process, when there is engineering change.
In the working station there should be a transparent queue of orders displayed in the execution system. Rescheduling of orders could be possible, but then should have clear rules maintained for what kind of rescheduling can avoid the bullwhip effect.
The target is that all materials/components are divided into work-packages as apart R&D and manufacturing process. Each work package is assigned to a working sequence in the production order. Work packages are the guidance for the operator to manufacture the product in correct sequence and with correct work instructions. In the execution system it is possible the for-user drill-down work packages to see which components and activities are in the work packages.
Figure 29. SAP S/4HANA Manufacturing architecture and products. (SAP company material, presented for case company)
Figure 29 presents the manufacturing architecture and products what is in S/4HANA.
Production engineering and operations (PEO) tool is operating based on the ISA-95 standard level 4 and level 3. In level 4 the focus is on enterprise business processes and to maintaining the bill of material related topics. There is listed focus areas:
· Visual mfg planner
· Change impact analysis
· Change record
· Master data management and visioning
· Supervisor application
From PEO in level 4 system would give possibility to create the M-BOM, routings with a detailed flow of activities and allocated materials, work instruction liked to BOM, inspection criteria and 3D visualizations. PEO on the shop floor level support to execute the created plan and the structure (Figure 30). End user interfaces provides all relevant information ensuring that the correct activity is performed and completed using correct data. Tracing parts and part specific genealogy in shop floor when required.
Figure 30. SAP S/4HANA manufacturing for production engineering and operations.
(SAP company material, presented for case company)
Compared to nowadays challenges the PEO could bring lot of new features and processes what are missing and are causing issues. One of biggest challenges is the engineering change management. To have a system supporting to change management and recording the changes, have possibility to impact on the shop floor. Handling the master data and
versioning has an impact on whole process. Usually the end user is the level where the data issues are seen. To have in place data driven manufacturing there needs to be supporting tools to maintain the data and correct it systematically. PEO has a capability to visualize the manufacturing planner support in creating and maintaining manufacturing processes and structure. Manufacturing processes and structures includes the manufacturing bill of material and routings by utilizing engineering structures (EBOM), and input through the visually guided planning process.
6 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
This thesis study describes how does SAP S/4HANA future look in case company and the investigation of the future tools and way of working. The thesis also investigates how the real-time optimized supply chain management could support to meet the variable manufacturing demand by creating smart supply chain that supports the demand driven supply chain. Thesis study consists of separate theoretical and empirical parts. The theoretical part in chapter 2 describes overall picture of the Supply chain, where selected main areas are Supply chain 4.0 and Industry 4.0. These both are describing the journey what the industry is going through and how the world is changing to more digital and proactive mode. The chapter 3 describes the SAP and SAP S/4HANA in high-level. The target is to have an overall picture of the new and coming features what could bring value to case company. The second part of the thesis is empirical findings, and it consist of defining SAP S/4HANA capabilities/modules for the supply chain. These selected modules were: company processes were divided into three main categories: production planning, warehouse operations and manufacturing process. These three categories are aligning the features and capabilities described in 5.1 to current way of working and the challenges that case company is facing the nowadays processes.
The purpose of the thesis study was to investigate how the real-time optimized supply chain management could support to meet the variable manufacturing demand by creating smart supply chain that supports the demand driven supply chain. To get answer to these the thesis is divided into separate theoretical and empirical parts, by answering two research questions. For the first research question, what future capabilities of SAP
S/4HANA could support manufacturing material flow / logistics in case company? The findings show that the SAP S/4HANA core is well structured and there are lot of possibilities. The business needs to be understood and after that compare to the functionalities. Integrated business planning was seen to be a topic where at least case company should continue the investigation further. Planning was seen that needs more focus, and find out tools which supports strategy level, tactical level and operational level.
The planning with tools which is in sync with different level is needed. This has direct impact to supply chain, suppliers, subcontractors, when there is planning changes in late phases and it is not transparent. The planning can see that it is going more to control tower concept where is covered the total chain planning, beginning from: engineering planning, supplier planning, inventory planning, production planning and collaboration planning.
There is a lot of dependencies and constraints between different level of planning. To understand the planning in more concrete level the case company should investigate more the planning and consider creating model company for simulate the different possibilities.
The second research question,how the supporting supply chain solutions of the extended functionalities in SAP S/4HANA is giving benefits for case company?Case company has a lot of good things in place to reach benefits for implementing new processes. SAP S/4HANA is providing many good new tools for optimizing the supply chain. Processes where the case company has the challenges and should be investigated in more details.
The core functionalities need to be working and in place to get most of the benefits measured.
How to Increase manufacturing flexibility based on real demand? Planning was seen one of the most important topics to get manufacturing stabilized. How the planning process could be standardized to have control tower concept in place and to have a centralized planning where the different orders are maintained and prioritized. There is nowadays to much fine scheduling and tools to maintain the real time planning and no impact on the master schedule. To make the decision for company level to optimize the product lifecycle management as a design or sales driven. There is an impact what is the correct level to optimize the material flow. How to plan the product lifecycle, how to plan for the material which demand decreases or product included into old product portfolio.
In the case company the PDM is Siemens Teamcenter. What are the best practices to do the tight integration between production when using the SAP S/4HANA PEO and the PDM data is in Teamcenter? The Teamcenter and SAP PEO integration should be further investigated to understand the system responsibilities compared to process what is desired. Important is to understand how the design can be used for complex manufacturing. For the future investigation point of view the manufacturing execution the engineering change notice handling is the topic what should investigated further. The engineering change notice handling is topic where are many constraint and different processes connected. To understand where the information is needed and when to have tight integrated support very complex and disturbance sensitive process. PEO has those elements presented and there are capabilities to have information flow from the design to manufacturing execution. When you do the design for manufacturing process in PEO, you would get the capacity need for integrated planning. Based on bill of material could the capacity be calculated. In addition to this the production flow through for the production line can be defined and what should be done and in which sequence.
For future investigations and my proposal for case company is that, IT landscape should be clearer and in understandable level. Ownership together corporate IT landscape and link to business processes.
The chosen research and the most suitable method in this case study was embedded single-case design. The reason for selecting the embedded single-case design is that even the SAP S/4HANA is divided and affects to several business processes, the system itself is single case. The approach for the study is to research capabilities from SAP S/4HANA to the case company.
The limitation of this study is that the results are based on theoretical assumptions and adopted for the case company. To have a validity of this research and results, the case company should implement the SAP S/4HANA. After the implementation the case company should cross-check the target of the implementation and find out if the targets were fulfilled. This research gives the information that the lot of potentials in SAP S/4HANA but needs to be understood the interfaces between the SAP and the other system.
The managerial implications in this case study are described as a link between theory and empirical findings on S/4HANA implementation. The findings and the business value of the research cannot be directly converted to scientific value, because the data are based on the case company. But the findings in general level can be leveraged and considered in companies. The general scientific value of this thesis can be the theoretical entity, and how that can be connected to complex production environment as in the case company.
The value of this case study is the overall description of benefits and development areas that the SAP S/4HANA covers.
Before the case company should start or decide the SAP S/4HANA implementation, the compatibility for further solutions is required. The study gives the general understanding of the solution.
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